


The Symmetric Property

by 17StreetsAhead



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Headaches & Migraines, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:41:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25909786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/17StreetsAhead/pseuds/17StreetsAhead
Summary: When a project takes an unfortunate turn for Abed, Troy has a much more important problem to solve than geometry.
Relationships: Troy Barnes & Abed Nadir, Troy Barnes & Annie Edison & Abed Nadir, Troy Barnes/Abed Nadir
Comments: 4
Kudos: 158





	The Symmetric Property

It was Troy’s fault for taking geometry, a real class. He could have fulfilled his math requirement with a music theory course, like Pierce. He could have taken Math in Nature with Jeff, and drawn seashells and sunflowers all semester. But in a fit of disappointment and self-flagellation he’d signed up for the hardest course available, and found himself spending a semester sitting next to Annie who actually _hummed_ while solving geometric proofs Troy could barely stand to look at.

The self-loathing was not resolved by being in a math class with Annie Edison. So in a bad mood, with his first project due the next day and Annie erroneously confident that he’d hold up his end, he’d sought out the person he probably should have gone to with the bad feelings in the first place.

It was evening and Abed was sitting alone in the study room with his messenger bag in his lap. He wore a plaid rust-colored button-up, open over a black t-shirt. “You’re late.”

“Look who learned to read a clock.” Troy cringed at himself; Abed wasn’t the idiot here. "Sorry."

Abed held up his wrist, sporting a black digital watch, and pointedly not commenting on Troy’s temper. “So what do you need?”

“To tell a story through geometric proofs.”

Abed blinked and strummed his fingers on his bag once, waiting for more. There was none.

“And Annie’s my partner, so it has to look good.”

“That complicates things,” Abed observed.

In the end Troy decided to solve a random proof from the textbook – but make it really _artistic_ and _impressive_. Abed’s brow furrowed at the concept but he seemed to grasp the point was to get it done, not produce a sensical product. They drew pictures. It looked like geometry on a cave wall. It was by and large an utterly poor use of time, and utterly Greendale. Abed had been tracing their penciled work with a Sharpie for the bulk of fifteen minutes, eyes narrowed and biting his tongue so fixatedly that it peeked outside his mouth while he worked, while Troy drew snakes and added blocked letter shadowing with orange marker. He stood up to Abed’s right, surveying their work. It was indeed a colorful and large… page of math. Abed capped his marker and closed his eyes a moment. “Why don’t we take a break.”

“We’re almost done. Anyway they’ll close the library soon.”

Troy expected some pushback; Abed usually got what he wanted. But instead Abed rolled his neck once, rubbed his eyes and went back to work.

Just before 10pm, Troy looked up when Abed pushed his chair back and absentmindedly fumbled with his pen, then dropped it mostly-capped onto the table; it rolled towards the center as Abed abandoned his post and walked toward the far side of the room, and stood. Troy lunged across their work, capped the Sharpie to safety, and caught a strong whiff of its chemical as he turned to Abed. “Alright, buddy?”

Abed held up an index finger, eyes closed, brow low. “There’s not enough air in here. We just need more,” he declared, moving toward the door, before –

_“The time is now 9:55pm, and the building is closing. The time is now zzzzxrrrr----”_

They both covered their ears as the intercom went off the rail, the automated message overtaken by a loud whine, blaring from the two speakers in their study room. Troy cursed through it, barely hearing his own lower pitch inside his skull as the speaker fritzed higher, and higher...

Until finally it was over, falling to a low buzz and then a click off. Troy tossed the Sharpie onto the table, spitefully. “Fuck’s sake, this school,” he said, then turned back around toward the other corner of the room. “…Abed?”

He didn’t answer. For a moment Abed was still, hands still cupped over his ears, and then he staggered once, shielding his eyes from – what? – and felt behind him with the other hand until he found the striped upholstery of the couch facing the other direction behind him. He sat ungracefully on its back, looking ill. When he moved his hands from his face he held his left hand in front of himself, and waved once, frowning. He did the same with his other arm. “It doesn’t look right,” he said, mostly to himself.

He shook his head once, and seemed to regret it, wincing. He brought both hands closer to his face, and seemed to remember Troy then. “It’s okay. I know they’re not really there. I just need… to…” Slowly, gingerly, Abed swung his long legs over the back of the couch and slid down to sit on it normally, regrouping in the center of the cushions.

“What’s not really there?”

“The shapes.” Abed shrugged out of his plaid layer and folded it loosely several times over itself. As he lay down on the couch, something Troy had never seen him do with anyone else in the room, he set it squarely over his own face, as though to block out the light. Lying in only his black t-shirt and black jeans, he looked like a wasted stage hand. Troy watched him a moment.

Shapes in the air.

Abed wasn’t crazy. They had established that a long time ago. Troy had seen enough; he had his phone out in record time and for a few moments it was silent, Troy hurrying through webpages and Abed shutting down further by the second.

“Got it,” Troy said eventually. “Are you asleep?”

“No, but I need you to stop shouting.”

Troy’s eyes scanned the screen. “Listen, are they weird shapes, messing up your vision? The internet says it could be a migraine. You get those, right?”

Abed’s voice was muffled beneath the flannel covering his face. “Hardly ever though. And this isn’t that bad.”

“Maybe not yet,” Troy said. “Do you have any medicine?”

“Yes.”

Troy beelined for Abed’s sidebag, unbuckling the clasp and unceremoniously rummaging through Abed’s things, spilling notebooks and pencil stubs over Troy’s stupid geometry project. “Well where is it?!”

“I’m not sure. Beneath the bathroom sink maybe?”

Troy’s arms fell to his side, bag in hand, and he looked over to the couch, though Abed was hidden from view. “You don’t have anything with you?”

The haze of silence from the couch suggested Abed didn’t think that warranted a response. Troy hurriedly crammed the contents back where they’d come from, slinging Abed’s bag over his shoulder. Next he seized his own backpack and put it on, encasing himself in straps. “Time to go,” he said, folding up their geometry paper and leaving markers and rulers in a heap wherever they lay. He shuffled quickly over to the couch, where Abed hadn’t moved except to turn his face inside toward the cushion. His torso took up most of the length of the couch; one leg stretched past the arm rest on the far end, the other foot flat on the cushion with his knee bent.

Troy knelt by him, careful not to topple over in a mass of school supplies. “Abed, we’re going to get locked in. We have to get you home.” Annie would be asleep already, which too bad; she’d know what to do.

Abed’s face was still hidden and he raised a hand as though feebly to stave Troy off. “I’ll give you a hundred bucks to leave me alone.”

Troy looked at the clock. If the internet was right, and why shouldn’t it be? – they didn’t have long before the real force of whatever happened to people with migraines… hit Abed. He dug his one free hand into his one accessible pocket and silently rejoiced at his luck. “No – now, buddy. Sunglasses, swap you in three, two, one.” He slid his own shades under the wrinkled plaid shirt and let Abed situate them, before together they got him on his feet. The rust-colored flannel fell to the floor and they let it – Abed because he was nearing incapacitation, probably, and Troy because he had his hands full of backpacks, geometry, and best friend. The study group would be the first ones in tomorrow, anyway.

Getting to Troy’s car took longer than he would have liked, mostly because Abed was trying to make the trip with his eyes closed. A couple leaving campus observed Abed's sunglasses and stilted stumbling and they sniggered, mistaking him for a drunken Thursday night bro. Troy’s project was wrinkling, nearly forgotten and scrunched between them. The chill of the fresh air seemed to help, enough to get Abed the last twenty yards toward Troy’s car. Finally Troy deposited Abed in the passenger seat and checked to make sure he was safe from the frame before shutting the door and jogging to the other side.

Abed flinched when the second door shut, looking slight with only the one layer on, the thin black tee, and he took a steadying breath. He moved one hand experimentally across his pane of vision in the dark, and then leaned his head back on the headrest. Troy thought he was trying to sleep, until he said from behind the glasses, “you were right about it. I’m glad the internet knew, and it isn’t just me being crazy. Kind of a relief.” He paused, out of steam. “Remind me of that in twenty minutes when I want to die.”

Troy shook his head, determined, eyes on the road. “You’re not crazy and you’re not going to die.”

* * *

The next morning when Annie woke and left her room, she found underfoot that a garish but technically correct half-project had been folded six times and slid under the crack of her bedroom door during the night. “Troy?” she said softly, emerging from her room in purple pajamas. She had to feel her way down the hallway through the dark and soon found out why: someone had draped one of her quilts across the horizontal curtain rod at the top of their window in the living area, so the whole apartment was shadowed, shielded from the yellow lights of the parking lot. Annie stumbled as quietly as she could back to their shared bathroom and turned the light on, cracking the door so she could make her way around their place without bonking into every table and wall.

She peeked, silently and apologetically, inside the curtain to Troy and Abed’s room. It wasn’t as effectively darkened, the window on that side covered only by a sheet that seemed to have been taken from the top bunk, which was empty. Below it, in the muted morning light Abed lay still on his back in his boxers and a t-shirt, with the sheets thrown off and one arm slung over his eyes. Next to the bed on the floor was an array of things: a waste basket, a glass of water, and a fully clothed sleeping Troy, whose back was propped against the right angle where their dresser was shoved next to the bed, and whose left elbow was raised onto the mattress, his forearm resting parallel to Abed’s and Troy’s hand loosely covering his. In Troy’s lap on the floor, falling out of the grasp of his other hand, was a comic book.

The lower right dresser handle was rammed into Troy’s back, so it had to have been as uncomfortable as it was sweet. “Troy,” Annie whispered, to no response. “Troy.”

“Abed’sssick,” Troy answered, not opening his eyes, as though that should be the end of whatever was happening.

Annie hesitated, then stood on her toes to reach up, over the boys, and pull Troy’s pillow from the top bunk. “Come on,” she said. “You can get in bed, or you can lie down here, but you can’t sit here like a Victorian widow keeping watch over the body.” A good joke wasted on the unconscious. If the two idiots ever sorted through their feelings she’d tell Jeff about this morning and _he’d_ appreciate her commentary. For now she knelt and lay the pillow on the floor next to Troy and coaxed his arm down from the bed. At the movement Abed shifted above them, his right palm splaying flat on the mattress, then sliding a few inches as though feeling for the presence that had been moved, before he mumbled once and stilled again, and his fingers relaxed back into a slight curl.

Without much ado she extracted the comic book, moved the water to a safe distance, and maneuvered Troy into a less martyred position, on the floor lying with a pillow and grumbling something vaguely appreciative at Annie.

“You’re welcome,” she said. “Take care of him today, okay?” Then, although Troy’s priorities had been made more or less clear, she added for his own peace of mind, “Don’t worry about class; I’ll make sure we get an ‘A’.”

Troy affirmed his investment in _that_ prospect by huffing slightly and turning on one side, away from the curtain door and toward their bunk bed where Abed had barely moved.

Annie smiled at his back. Right then.

**Author's Note:**

> First fic, toes in the water.  
> They're called migraine auras. My sympathies if you're familiar with them, but hope you liked the fic.


End file.
